Amid the verbiage uttered over the current global economic meltdown (or cyclical dip, if you’re a classical optimist), nobody is talking about the real structural flaw in our capitalist existence: there just isn’t enough work to go around. In future, most people will have to be artists.
Every other day some guru or another wags a finger at the Canadian worker, claiming we aren’t productive enough. Workers in other countries are making more phone calls, selling more gadgets, turning more things off assembly lines at a much faster pace. Canadians are falling behind at a lamentable rate.
This is like telling a runway model she just isn’t thin enough, thinness and productivity being comparative realities. What they really mean is that one titan’s drones are busier than the other’s.
In fact, most of the so-called work that gets humankind out of bed in the morning is quite unnecessary in the sense that it contributes nothing essential to our communal existence, such as shelter, food or health. We’ve moved so far beyond the basic needs of the species that the life we lead is bending around to bite its tail. Damage to the planet caused by producing non-essentials is actually creating urgent, meaningful work. Most of what we deem work feeds invented needs.
While the current economic slump has been traced to the banking crisis and the housing crisis, the only threat that gives both prize-winning economists and boutique owners nightmares is a crisis of consumer confidence. If for whatever reason a large number of consumers decide they don’t need or can’t afford non-essentials, then the whole edifice will surely come tumbling down and we’ll all be naked, idle, out of work. Like any artist, forced to live by our wits.
This is why society at large should reflect long and hard on what it means to be an artist, because like it or not, that’s what’s in store for citizens of the first world.
The handy dictionary at my fingertips defines art as “the creation of beautiful or thought-provoking works, e.g., painting, music or writing”. I’m not suggesting that everybody should be writing poetry or attempting stand-up comedy at home – although sometimes it seems everybody is. The comparison lies not in the product of activity, but in the process, the origins and expectations of such work.
Artists must create their existence, not only create art but continuously create a need for what they make. A great painting or an amazing film creates desire by virtue of its unpredictable, beautiful, thrilling, delightful or thought-provoking existence. Those who make art do so through a sustained investment of hope and faith. The entire endeavour, like the complex world around art, is a relentless act of will. A tightrope act. There is no security, no real reason to believe tomorrow’s creation will as good as or better than yesterday’s, if it even exists at all.
Profound insecurity is a fact of the creative life. Recognition and acceptance of this occupational hazard is a sign of maturity in an artist. It is a philosophical state to which our entire society should aspire.
